Above: The brands and models of six popular headphones used in this study.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
The predicted sound quality of 61 different models of in-ear headphones (blue curve) versus their retail price (green bars).| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
Fig. 1 The Harman Headphone Virtualizer App allows listeners to make double-blind comparisons of different headphones through a high-quality replicator headphone. The app has two listening modes: a sighted mode (shown) and a blind mode (not shown) where listeners are not biased by non-auditory factors (brand, price, celebrity endorsement,etc). Clicking on the picture will show a larger version.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
At the recent 137th convention of the Audio Engineering Society we presented our latest research paper entitled, "The Influence of Listeners' Experience, Age and Culture on Headphone Sound Quality Preferences."| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
The 2014 Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook came out this week. In it, you can find an article I wrote called "Perceiving and Measuring Headphone Sound Quality: Do Listeners Agree on What Makes a Headphone Sound Good?"| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
Last October, I was in Toronto giving a presentation to the local AES section on the perception and measurement of headphones. After the talk, I sat down with Mike Raine from Professional Sound for an interview. Some of what we discussed is summarized in this article called Sound Advice.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
To my surprise, this morning an audio friend tweeted a link to an article I recently wrote for our company's internal newsletter entitled, "The Science and Marketing of Sound Quality." My article can be found on a new Harman Innovation website launched today that features articles on current and future disruptive technology that will impact consumers' infotainment experiences. Check it out.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
Todd Welti, Sean Olive and Elisabeth McMullin are shown above with their custom binaural mannequin, "Sidney" wearing a pair of AKG K1000's. No fit or leakage issues with these headphones.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
This past week I had an enjoyable time meeting well-known technology writer Robert Scoble who was visiting our Harman facilities in Northridge, CA along with his geek-in-command Sam Levine. As part of the tour, I showed them our Reference Listening Room and Multichannel Listening Lab where we do product research and double-blind evaluations of loudspeakers. We discussed the science and philosophy behind how we design and measure the sound quality of our products.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
Geoffrey Morrison, an audio writer at CNET and Sound & Vision has posted a nice summary of my latest AES paper "Some New Evidence that Teenager and College Students May Prefer Accurate Sound Reproduction" presented at the recent 132nd AES Convention in Budapest, Hungary.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
On Tuesday, April 26th 2011, I will be giving a presentation at the meeting of the Los Angeles AES Chapter on several topics related to recent audio research at Harman International. The topics include:| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
Version 2.04 of Harman How to Listen is now available for download here.| Audio Musings by Sean Olive
You can download the latest update of Harman How to Listen (version 2.03) here. This update fixes a bug in the Windows version that prompted listeners to locate program material that was not packaged with the installer. There is no significant change to the Mac version. Enjoy!| Audio Musings by Sean Olive